Monday, August 29, 2016

August 29, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Deaths that exceed births might sound like science fiction, but they are now Europe's reality. It just happened. During 2015, 5.1 million babies were born in the EU, while 5.2 million persons died, meaning that the EU for the first time in modern history recorded a negative natural change in its population. The numbers come from Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union), which since 1961 has been counting Europe's population. It is official.

There is, however, another surprising number: the European population increased overall from 508.3 million to 510.1 million. Have you guessed why? The immigrant population increased, by about two million in one year, while the native European population was shrinking. It is the substitution of a population. Europe has lost the will to maintain or grow its population. The situation is as demographically as seismic as during the Great Plague of the 14th Century.

This shift is what the British demographer David Coleman described in his study, "Immigration and Ethnic Change in Low-Fertility Countries: A Third Demographic Transition." Europe's suicidal birth rate, coupled with migrants who multiply faster, will transform European culture. The declining fertility rate of native Europeans coincides, in fact, with the institutionalization of Islam in Europe and the "re-Islamization" of its Muslims.

And, the r-select traitors? They are there as well:

Demographic suicide is not only experienced; it appears to be wanted. The xenophile European bourgeoisie, which today controls politics and the media, seem imbued with a snobbish and masochistic racism. They have turned against the values of their own Judeo-Christian culture and combined it with a hallucinatory, romanticized view of the values of other cultures. The sad paradox is that Europeans are now importing young people in large numbers from the Middle East to compensate for their lifestyle choices.

An agnostic and sterile continent -- deprived of its gods and children because it banished them -- will have no strength to fight or to assimilate a civilization of the zealous and the young. The failure to counter the coming transformation seems to come down on the side of Islam. Is what we are seeing the last days of summer?

According to Spengler, Europe saw its summer in the 17th and 18th centuries. The 19th and early 20th centuries was its autumn. We are now well into winter.

"The secret history of the EU, written on an Italian prison island, reveals why the project is doomed"--The Telegraph. The concept of a United Europe that gave rise to the current EU was the brainchild of a communist theorist, Altiero Spinelli, who had been imprisoned by Mussolini during World War 2 (ironically, the same time that Hitler was trying to create a United Europe). According to the article, "Spinelli’s Ventotene Manifesto proposed that his future government of Europe should be quietly assembled by its supporters over many years; and that only when all its pieces were in place would those supporters summon a convention to draw up a 'Constitution for Europe', which would finally reveal to the European people just what they had been up to." Also:

The point is that, exactly as envisioned in their different ways by Spinelli and Monnet, the “project” has only ever had one real agenda in all it has done: to promote a supranational government for Europe, based on eliminating national self-interest: what Monnet called “national egoism”. There could only ever be one direction of travel: ever more integration; whatever the question, the answer is always “more Europe”.

"When Belief Fades, Civilizations May Fade, Too"--PJ Media. The author notes that the United States, which long has resisted the non-religiosity of Europe, has seen a sudden drop in church attendance. A recent Pew poll found that "49% of American adults now attend religious services just a few times a year, rarely or never." The author then goes on to note:

Unrelated to the Pew study, but by happenstance concurrent with it, noted Catholic writer George Weigel last week penned a warning along just such lines. Writing of the "God deficit" evident in Europe, Weigel posited that for reasons both religious and secular, the decline in the practices and understandings of Christianity leads to cultural decline as well.

Weigel wrote that as Christianity declines, so too does the commitment to the particularly Christian (especially but not exclusively Catholic) "social-ethical principle of 'subsidiarity:' the idea that decision-making should be left at the lowest possible level (as in classic American federalism). 'Subsidiarity' is a check against the tendency of all modern states to concentrate power at the center."

(This is far from the only problematic result of declining faith, of course, but it is an important one.)

Among the benefits of subsidiarity, Weigel explained, is that it militates against the ultimate and deadly centralization of totalitarianism and that it also "implies respect for cultural difference" by letting local communities operate in particular ways best suited to them, as long as they abide by the basic laws and broad civic understandings of the larger society/nation.

Weigel says the European Union's heavily centralized, heavily bureaucratized system runs afoul of subsidiarity -- and that its stultifying regulatory regime (recently rejected dramatically in the United Kingdom's "Brexit" vote) is a natural result of the decline in principled subsidiarity that is part and parcel of declining faith. Summarizing and endorsing the theories of other writers, Weigel argues that "it takes a certain kind of people, formed by a certain kind of culture to live certain virtues, to keep liberal democracy from decaying into new forms of authoritarianism."

Weigel concluded: "It would be very foolish to think ourselves immune to a similar crisis of political culture."

[T]he idea of a Godless church has been woven deep into the firmware of "Progressivism," ever since Friedrich Nietzsche and the men whom historian Martin E. Marty dubbed "The Bearded God-killers" (Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin and Freud) had their heyday in the late 19th century. However, man is hardwired to believe in something, and the following century could be viewed as one long attempt at finding an alternative God via totalitarian regimes (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.), and the nature-worship of radical environmentalism. Not to mention drugs -- recall Tom Wolfe exploring the religious motivations of '60s drug users in his seminal mid-1970s essay "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening," which as the second half of its title implies, is a lengthy treatise on all sorts of ways to build alternative religions that replace God with the self.

The point is that Western Civilization (and the benefits it brings) is reliant on Western Culture, including its religion. Take away the Culture (including the religion), and the Civilization will also leave or die. A good example (posted in relation to unrelated topic) can be found in this bit of non-PC history from 2005: "A Morsel of Goat Meat"--New York Times. Writing about Zimbabwe in 2005, the author related:

The hungry children and the families dying of AIDS here are gut-wrenching, but somehow what I find even more depressing is this: Many, many ordinary black Zimbabweans wish that they could get back the white racist government that oppressed them in the 1970's.

"If we had the chance to go back to white rule, we'd do it," said Solomon Dube, a peasant whose child was crying with hunger when I arrived in his village. "Life was easier then, and at least you could get food and a job."

Mr. Dube acknowledged that the white regime of Ian Smith was awful. But now he worries that his 3-year-old son will die of starvation, and he would rather put up with any indignity than witness that.

An elderly peasant in another village, Makupila Muzamba, said that hunger today is worse than ever before in his seven decades or so, and said: "I want the white man's government to come back. Even if whites were oppressing us, we could get jobs and things were cheap compared to today."

His wife, Mugombo Mudenda, remembered that as a younger woman she used to eat meat, drink tea, use sugar and buy soap. But now she cannot even afford corn gruel. "I miss the days of white rule," she said.

"Church of England parishes consider first step to break away over sexuality"--The Telegraph. "A group of parishes is preparing what could be the first step towards a formal split in the Church of England over issues such as homosexuality, with the creation of a new 'shadow synod' vowing to uphold traditional teaching." The LGBT dispute will be the force that tears many churches and congregations apart. Since LGBT is high r, it should be clear what will be the consequences of supporting the LGBT movement.

"SC school bans American flag from football games"--EAG News. "On Friday, Travelers Rest High School principal Lou Lavely banned students from carrying American flags into a football game against Berega High School, because a lot of students at Berega are Hispanic. Lavely contends the American flag could have been used to taunt those students, WNCN reports." Another example of the lack of in-group loyalty shown by an r-select individual.

"Surprise: Gun ownership rises to 44% of all homes"--Washington Examiner. "After a steady decline in gun ownership in recent years, more homes are reporting having a weapon inside, according to a new survey. Pew Research Center, in a poll on guns released Friday, showed that 44 percent of the country has a gun in the house. Some 51 percent don't." While more people may be willing to trust a pollster from Pew, this probably still understates the number of households with firearms. I know that I would never admit to a pollster that I owned any firearms, and I'm sure that I am not alone in that regard. By the way, I would note that if firearms were as dangerous as the anti-gun types maintain, the United States would be such a locus of violence that it would make Syria a Sunday picnic by comparison.

A week ago in Minneapolis, Republican donors attending a Trump fundraiser were assaulted, robbed and spat upon by a violent leftist mob as they were leaving the event. Attendees say that even though there was a strong law enforcement presence at the convention center downtown where the fundraiser was held, they were not afforded any police protection when coming to and leaving the event -- and even more incredibly, there were no arrests.

It used to be that you wanted a firearm for self-defense because the police couldn't always protect you. However, it seems more and more it is an issue that the police won't protect you, even if they could.

"Guns For Beginners: The GLOCK 43…Not For Noobs"--The Truth About Guns. The author recommends against purchasing a Glock 43 for concealed carry--at least for someone that is not an expert--primarily because of the excessive felt recoil due to the low weight. The author also considered the firearm to be too big as a true "backup gun." The author ended up selling his. Anyway, a different take than you normally hear about Glocks.

"Lightning Review: Sticky Holster LG-2 for Glock 19 (and Other Pistols) – The Best 'Universal' Holster There Is?"--The Firearms Blog. The author, Nathaniel F., discusses that he likes having a holster for a firearm that does more than just concealed carry. He carries a Glock 17, and likes to have something that keeps the trigger safe from an accidental pull whether its concealed carry, the pocket of a car seat, in the night stand, etc. In that regard, he found the Sticky Holster for the Glock 19 to work well. I also have found that I tend to use my DeSantis Nemesis pocket holster in much the same way for my S&W J-frame.

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